I prefer Socket 370.

I've always liked the neatness? of the cartridge style of slot 1 plus the legendary BX chipset boards. But for the higher P3's with the 133 FSB I'd choose socket, but then I wouldn't choose a 133 FSB P3. I personally think the 100 FSB CPU's are enough.

Avoid the junk in general but go for the socketed versions as they are easy to work with.

Are you saying P3s are junk?

Iam also vote for socket 370..

Why?

- Some slot 1 or slot A processors arent secured very good in the mechanisme. (especially slot 1 versions) They made the retention bracket so that it should secured in place..
Mostly this retention bracket didnt work properly, especially those slot 1 to s370 convertor boards, or so (i guess SECC1) versions that would secured properly..
- The retention bracket is a big failure to break it easilly..
- Most Slot processors came with one or two tiny little fans.. Big downside is, they make a horrible noise..

- the only advantage i can think of, its they are easy to swap., and easy installation without breaking pins.. They are also easy to get now, but mostly they cost more money compared with the socket version..

The big advantage about socket 370..

- No messing around with that stupid retention bracket.
- Cpus they cost you nothing, and are in big quantities.
- Coolers are better quality, and they are bigger, so they make lesser noise.

I get CPU's of both kind; Slot 1 and Socket 370/370T. From Klamath up to Tualatin-S, and VIA C3 too.
But concerning mainboards, so far I always went for Slot 1. Then use Slotket/Upgradeware adapters where necessary. Actually I prefer a Socket 370 CPU on an adapter over native Slot 1, as a good adapter allows manual core voltage selection and manual FSB request. Of course Slot 1 mainboards can take the Pentium II, and the Slotted P IIIs.

ncmark wrote:

Are you saying P3s are junk?

I didn't say that, those super crappy power supplies with the rotted caps and low end boards are to be avoided. A lot of them oems from the time were horrid when it came to features.

I also use a S370 to Slot 1 adapter for the faster CPUs.

One thing I do with all my Slot 1 boards is remove these retention brackets. Firstly they make the board much taller and harder to put in a anti-static bag and pack away. But it also needs a lot of force and mucking around to remove a slot 1 CPU.

Now I have no retention bracket anymore and swapping CPUS for benchmarking is awesome.

One downside is that larger S370 coolers don't fit well on the Slot 1 adapter.

On a S370 board I can use the big guns, a massive cooler with 7000 rpm fan seen and heard here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lozF7Nx97j8

I too always remove the plastic retention brackets on slot 1 boards. It makes installing and removing slot CPUs a breeze. In fact, it feels cool to just remove and insert CPUs in the slots. 😁

I don't have a current PIII assembled and working but my PII system has the unlocked 400MHz CPU with the large gold coloured passive heatsink attached.

The advantage of socket 370 that I can think of is the availability of more varities of CPU coolers. And of course, the fastest PIII CPUs.

I always believed that Intel first came out with slot1 because (1) the process at the time wasn't good enough to get it all one on die/chip, and (2) they were trying to kill off socket 7

I like the comment made n redhill that Intel could easily have easily carried socket 7 past 233 MHz but they wanted to move everyone to slot 1

Oh absolutely. It's a known fact that Intel changes platforms whenever an opportunity presents itself.

A 100 MHz FSB Pentium MMX would have been able to keep Socket 7 going for a while. But such an approach doesn't drive sales.

I prefer 370 for faster P3s for the simple reason of more interoperability with Socket A (462) for heatsinks (I have both kinds of machines btw). There's quite a few nice blocks of copper or heatpipes that were sold for Athlon and later AthlonXP that can do wonders with the lower-wattage Pentium 3. That isn't to say Slot 1 is bad in any way - I used to have 2-3 of them and was fairly happy with them, but they were all passively cooled chips (around that 400MHz range); the ones with fans are just too noisy.

'Slot' was just a temporary anomaly to allow for relatively cheaper 'on-package' back-side bus L2 cache. Intel sold it as the next best thing since sliced bread upon PII launching, but as soon as the L2 cache could be integrated fully on-die, 'Slot' went down the drain never to be heard of again.

It's is bad medicine for cooling, some of the hottest components in the mobo (VRMs, in/out caps, coils) usually lay in the aerodynamic deadzone behind the 'wall' of the CPU cartridge, and overheat.

I have a few fan-less Slot 1 processors and always put a 80 mm fan onto it 😀

I remember having one of the plastic tabs on a socket 370 motherboard break on me back in the day, so the fan ended dangling off the unbroken tab until I could get a replacement for that motherboard. Slot 1 CPUs don't have this issue.

Slot 1 for me. Hate the flimsy 370 socket mounts.

I once nerd-raged because I couldn't remove this slot 1 CPU. It was after this incident that I removed all the slot 1 brackets from all my motherboards 🤣

I once totalled a perfectly good PIII 733 that OCed like a champ, it was somehow accidentally unseated from the slot and up in smoke it went 😒 .

My heartfelt expletives about the event were probably heard as far away as Australia 😀 .

My vote goes to slot 1, since you can install a socket CPU in a slot but not the other way around 😉